"Le Chevalier au Lion" and "Ywain and Gawain": a comparison between source and translation highlighting similarities and differences, through culture, translating methods, and translators.

Abstract

Translations have had and still have a fundamental role within the development of national literatures, creating new models, influencing genres and inciting mutations within the culture of a country. The pure act of translating means being able to be in the in betweenness of two different cultures, traditions and languages, and being able to cross that distance and to cover it in the best way possible. It is a process that does not involve just a mere reproduction of the content of the text which is to be translated, and on the same level this process implicate a concrete dialectical comparison between complex and vast cultural systems. Moreover, the study of translation requires interdisciplinary competences able to focus not only on text production, but also on the cultural and linguistic target context, and on the problem connected to the reception of the translation. In this work, I will take into consideration two texts: “Le Chevalier au Lion” originally written by Chrétien de Troyes, and its Middle English translation entitled “Ywain and Gawain”. Through a comparative analysis I will try to identify the differences between source and target text, and the reasons that brought the translator to embrace some working decisions during the realization of the version that originated the resulting translated text.